Gothenburg, Sweden – October 19, 2011: According to a new market report from the telecom research firm Berg Insight, the global market for location-based services (LBS) platforms and middleware will see steady growth in the coming years, with demand primarily driven by emergency call and lawful intercept mandates. Annual revenues for mobile location platforms, including A-GPS servers and middleware platforms, are projected to grow from about € 150 million in 2010 to € 300 million in 2016. Ericsson remains the leading vendor in terms of number of contracts for location platforms, ahead of Nokia Siemens Networks and TeleCommunication Systems.

Governments and telecom regulators in many parts of the world are introducing stricter emergency call and lawful intercept mandates that require network operators to invest in location platforms. These mandates typically entail accurate location of any handset deployed and therefore require installation of network-based location technologies. Network-based location technologies also have superior indoor coverage and reliability. Commercial LBS are not likely to have a similar impact on the market for location platforms. Today consumer LBS can rely on alternative location sources including GPS in the handsets, Wi-Fi location and third party Cell-ID databases. “Location-based services have gained mainstream acceptance, enabled by broader adoption of GPS-enabled smartphones”, said André Malm, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight. “All leading handset vendors provide their own assistance services for GPS handsets to ensure a good user experience in case the operator has not yet deployed A-GPS services.”

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